I've been using Dragon Naturally Speaking on the PC for years but hesitated buying the Mac version because of various poor online reviews. Finally I've taken the plunge and bought Dragon Dictate 4, and this review is written after completing two of the training exercises and using the software for around an hour. Installation, using a physical disk, was straightforward on my 2014 MacBook Pro running El Capitan. There are tutorials to walk you through the basic functions, which are worth doing even if you have some experience with the PC version as there are functional differences. The accuracy is very good (it has difficulty distinguishing that and but; the PC version does too).
Just over a year ago, I reviewed Dragon Dictate 2.5, which was an incremental upgrade to version 2.0 of the program. Nuance has now released Dragon Dictate 3, building on the foundation developed. Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 requires an Intel-based Macintosh running Apple OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, as well as 4GB of free hard disk space and a recommended 2GB RAM. It was expected that Dragon Dictate 3 brings some new and exciting features since Apple became a direct competitor by implementing “voice over” technology into Mac OS X Mountain Lion. When you install Dragon Dictate, you actually install voice recognition engine which works with just about any application.
I was pleasantly surprised by how quick and easy it is to correct mistakes, given that this was often an issue highlighted in poor reviews. Over the years with Dragon software I've learned the hard way how important it is to ensure the input is as high-quality as possible: a good microphone, little to no background noise, and clearly enunciated natural speech. Given good input, this software is very accurate indeed. I should say that I mostly use Dragon software for dictation rather than controlling my computer, so I can't comment on how effective it is at that. For dictation, it's superb.
Inevitably it will make mistakes in recognition and you will have to edit, but that's no different to typing out a document. If, like me, you have difficulties typing for any length of time, Dragon is a lifesaver, and I'm just annoyed I didn't purchase the Mac version sooner. I've given it 3 stars when really it should be 3 1/2 - but it could be 5. Prior to buying my mac air book, I had a dell & used Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The speech recognition for that isn't a patch on this even though it's much further along.
The speech recognition for Dragon for Mac is exemplary BUT the editing isn't. The editing commands are much more limited than NaturallySpeaking.
Example: It only deletes backwards & only with the words Press The Key Delete instead of Backspace. This makes deleting single characters cumbersome. Also the Spell That isn't as good.
I could list other examples, but this isn't the main problem. The problem is it's riddled with bugs!! Rogue capital letters appear at the end of every sentence & the following sentence then begins with a lower case. This has to be edited manually ( keyboard or Mac Edit). Gaps appear where they shouldn't & don't where they should.
Also the curser goes on little jaunts of its own. The latest version was meant to have dealt with these issues, but it hasn't. Contrary to what you will read, saying Cache (cash) The Document doesn't help. I'm sure these issues will eventually be addressed by further improvements, however for anyone who finds it very difficult to use a key board, I can't really recommend it as the editing issues & particularly the bugs make it very cumbersome & slow to produce a document. I typed this on my ipad. Dear Nuance/ Predatory Hedge Funds: the speech recognition on this is near to perfect, even if speaking quickly. If the editing commands were as comprehensive as they are on NaturallySpeaking & the bugs exterminated, Dragon Dictate for Mac could easily be the best speech recognition product on the market by a country yard!
I've given it 3 stars when really it should be 3 1/2 - but it could be 5. Prior to buying my mac air book, I had a dell & used Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
The speech recognition for that isn't a patch on this even though it's much further along. The speech recognition for Dragon for Mac is exemplary BUT the editing isn't. The editing commands are much more limited than NaturallySpeaking. Example: It only deletes backwards & only with the words Press The Key Delete instead of Backspace.
This makes deleting single characters cumbersome. Also the Spell That isn't as good. I could list other examples, but this isn't the main problem.
The problem is it's riddled with bugs!! Rogue capital letters appear at the end of every sentence & the following sentence then begins with a lower case.
This has to be edited manually ( keyboard or Mac Edit). Gaps appear where they shouldn't & don't where they should.
Also the curser goes on little jaunts of its own. The latest version was meant to have dealt with these issues, but it hasn't. Contrary to what you will read, saying Cache (cash) The Document doesn't help. I'm sure these issues will eventually be addressed by further improvements, however for anyone who finds it very difficult to use a key board, I can't really recommend it as the editing issues & particularly the bugs make it very cumbersome & slow to produce a document. I typed this on my ipad.
Dear Nuance/ Predatory Hedge Funds: the speech recognition on this is near to perfect, even if speaking quickly. If the editing commands were as comprehensive as they are on NaturallySpeaking & the bugs exterminated, Dragon Dictate for Mac could easily be the best speech recognition product on the market by a country yard! I've been using Dragon Naturally Speaking on the PC for years but hesitated buying the Mac version because of various poor online reviews. Finally I've taken the plunge and bought Dragon Dictate 4, and this review is written after completing two of the training exercises and using the software for around an hour. Installation, using a physical disk, was straightforward on my 2014 MacBook Pro running El Capitan.
There are tutorials to walk you through the basic functions, which are worth doing even if you have some experience with the PC version as there are functional differences. The accuracy is very good (it has difficulty distinguishing that and but; the PC version does too). I was pleasantly surprised by how quick and easy it is to correct mistakes, given that this was often an issue highlighted in poor reviews. Over the years with Dragon software I've learned the hard way how important it is to ensure the input is as high-quality as possible: a good microphone, little to no background noise, and clearly enunciated natural speech.
Given good input, this software is very accurate indeed. I should say that I mostly use Dragon software for dictation rather than controlling my computer, so I can't comment on how effective it is at that. For dictation, it's superb.
Inevitably it will make mistakes in recognition and you will have to edit, but that's no different to typing out a document. If, like me, you have difficulties typing for any length of time, Dragon is a lifesaver, and I'm just annoyed I didn't purchase the Mac version sooner. I bought this after hurting my shoulder and needing to write reports when I couldn't type. I used the built in speech to text capacity of Yosemite initially, but there are no custom dictionary's and many fewer commands, and I felt I needed Dragon. It is slightly less accurate than the built in version, curiously, since Yosemite uses the Dragon engine, I believe, but it is fairly easy to use and far better than I was expecting from some of the reviews.
If you have a Mac running Yosemite you will only need this for longer complex documents or total voice control of your computer. It will also trancribe from volce recorder, though only for single voices. The ability to transcribe interviews with 2 or more voices would be a a boon.Nuance please note. I think it's good and shows that this kind of software can now do what it has always offered but never quite achieved.I tried Via Voice years ago ang gave up even trying to train it. If you need this capacity, get it. It does have a learning curve but it works. Having come from a work environment where we were still lucky enough to have audio typists to move to an office where we were expected to type our own reports and meeting minutes was quite a shock and I soon realised that producing these documents was going to consume more time than I had available so I started to look for an IT solution to the problem and a Dragon Dictate seemed to fit the bill.
Installing the software was easy and while the initial 'training' was a little laborious I was expecting that. Having now used the software for a month or so my productivity has lept up and I am sure people are wondering how I am doing it. The software does not produce the finished article, you need to check it thoroughly for 'sounds like' words and format it to your requirements but I reckon 85% of the job is being done for me now and, besides, I always had to check the audio typists work anyway as that wasn't 100% perfect either. If you are wondering about a digital dictaphone look no further than your android or IOS smart phone for an appropriate app. I have an iPhone 5C and use an app called Olympus Dictation which I really can't fault and, astonishingly, it was free (?) to download. All in all Dragon Dictate is a great piece of software and, frankly, I would be lost without it.
I am a casual user of dictation software, and this software gives the best speech recognition quality of any software I've ever used. You need to make sure you're using a good quality microphone: I use an Audio-Technica Cardioid Condenser USB Microphone AT2020, which is quite expensive but gives great results for dictation (and also for Skype). I did a bit of training the system to recognise my voice, which is very straightforward, and the dictation results are excellent, I have to make very few corrections. I can dictate into Microsoft Word 2011 and Evernote, which is all I use it for. It feels like the commands to make corrections take a while to get used to, and you need to practice them, but I don't use them much - I just make manual adjustments with the keyboard.
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In fact, there is a richness of features that I suspect many people never use.